Resting place Unknown Nationality SovietGeorgian Name Yakov Dzhugashvili | Other names Patsana, Yasha Occupation Soldier | |
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Full Name Iakob Iosebis dze Jugashvili Cause of death Shot in the head; other sources, Suicide. Siblings Vasily Stalin, Svetlana Alliluyeva Parents Joseph Stalin, Kato Svanidze Children Yevgeny Dzhugashvili, Galina Dzhugashvili Similar People Joseph Stalin, Vasily Stalin, Svetlana Alliluyeva, Kato Svanidze, Yevgeny Dzhugashvili | ||
Yakov dzhugashvili
Yakov Iosifovich Jugashvili (Georgian: იაკობ იოსების ძე ჯუღაშვილი, Iakob Iosebis dze Jugashvili, Russian: Я́ков Ио́сифович Джугашви́ли; 18 March 1907 – 14 April 1943) was the eldest of Joseph Stalin's three children, the son of Stalin's first wife, Kato Svanidze. His younger half-siblings were Svetlana Alliluyeva and Vasily Dzhugashvili. He served in the Red Army during the Second World War, and was captured, or surrendered, in the initial stages of the German invasion of the Soviet Union. While there has been dispute over the circumstances of his death, historians currently believe that he died in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
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Early life
Dzhugashvili was born in the village of Baji, in the Kutais Governorate, then part of Imperial Russia, and was baptised in the local church. His mother died of typhus when he was less than a year old. Until the age of 14, Dzhugashvili was raised by his aunts and grandmother in Tiflis. In 1921, Dzhugashvili's uncle Alexander Svanidze urged him to leave for Moscow to acquire a higher education. Dzhugashvili spoke only Georgian, so, after his arrival in Moscow, he commenced with learning the Russian language, aiming to apply for university studies.
Dzhugashvili and his father, Stalin, never got along. Allegedly once Stalin referred to Dzhugashvili as a "mere cobbler". Their tense relationship was exacerbated when Dzhugashvili and his Jewish fiancée, Zoya Gunina, attempted to inform Stalin of their engagement. According to Dzhugashvili's stepmother Nadezhda Alliluyeva, she saw a young woman running away from the family's Moscow dacha in tears. When Alliluyeva entered the house, she saw a despairing Dzhugashvili, who immediately left to his bedroom. It was revealed that when Dzhugashvili and Gunina told Stalin of their engagement, he became enraged. Stalin's rage caused Gunina's flight from the dacha, and Dzhugashvili to attempt suicide in his room via firearm. He missed his heart and hit his lung instead; while his stepmother Alliluyeva tended to his wound and called the doctor, his father is quoted as saying, "He can't even shoot straight".
Marriage and family
Dzhugashvili married Yulia Meltzer, a well-known Jewish dancer from Odessa. After meeting Yulia at a reception, Yakov fought with her second husband, NKVD officer Nikolai Bessarab, and arranged her divorce. Yakov became her third husband. Yakov was survived by two children: a daughter in 1938 by Yulia: Galina, who died in 2007. and a son born in 1936: Yevgeni, who died in 2016, gave many interviews about his grandfather.
Second World War
Dzhugashvili served as an artillery officer in the Red Army and was captured on 16 July 1941 in the early stages of the German invasion of USSR at the Battle of Smolensk. The Germans later offered to exchange Yakov for Friedrich Paulus, the German Field Marshal captured by the Soviets after the Battle of Stalingrad, but Stalin turned the offer down, allegedly saying, "I will not trade a Marshal for a Lieutenant." According to some sources, there was another proposition as well, that Hitler wanted to exchange Yakov for Hitler's nephew Leo Raubal; this proposition was not accepted either. While Soviet propaganda always asserted that Dzhugashvili was captured, Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, wrote in her memoirs that her father believed his son deliberately surrendered to the Germans after being encouraged to do so by his wife. Stalin, she wrote, had Yulia imprisoned and interrogated as a result. In February 2013 Der Spiegel printed evidence that it interpreted as indicating that Yakov surrendered. A letter written by Dzhugashvili's brigade commissar to the Red Army’s political director, quoted by Der Spiegel, states that after Dzhugashvili's battery had been bombed by the Germans, he and another soldier initially put on civilian clothing and escaped, but then at some point Dzhugashvili stayed behind, saying that he wanted to stay and rest.
Until recently, it was not clear when and how he died. According to the official German account, Dzhugashvili died by running into an electric fence in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he was being held. Some have contended that Yakov committed suicide at the camp, while others have suggested that he was murdered. Currently, declassified files show that Dzhugashvili was shot by a guard for refusing to obey orders. While Dzhugashvili was walking around the camp he was ordered back to the barracks under the threat of being shot. Dzhugashvili refused and shouted, "Shoot!" The guard shot him in the head. This was seen by Stalin as a more honourable death, and Stalin's attitude towards his son softened slightly.
After the war, British officers in charge of captured German archives came upon the papers depicting Dzhugashvili’s death at Sachsenhausen. The German records indicated that he was shot while attempting to flee after an argument with British fellow prisoners. The British Foreign Office briefly considered presenting these papers to Stalin at the Potsdam Conference as a gesture of condolence. They scrapped the idea because neither the British nor the Americans had informed the Soviets that they had captured key German archives, and sharing those papers with Stalin would have prompted the Soviets to inquire about the source of these records.